Sir W. Hart.Dyke's reply amounted to this,—that the School Boards
in Salisbury and York had a majority against the creation of a Board school, and that the Act of 1870 only intended the Department to force a Board school on the people in cases where the School Board could not provide sufficient accommodation through Voluntary schools without a Board school. As to York, Sir W. Hart-Dyke denied that the inspectors' reports showed the schools provided there to be inadequate in their teaching, or deficient in their structural arrangements. He had taken the opinion of the law officers of the Crown about the right of the Education Department to issue a requisition for the creation of a Board school,—which the School Board opposed,—and the law officers had advised that, under the Act of 1870, the requisition could not be issued. That was a sufficient reply as regards the failure to interfere, but certainly not a reply sufficient to show that the Act of 1870 does not need amendment. Mr. Mundella's censure was rejected by a majority of 52, 167 against 115.
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